Fine art has for decades now tended to be circumspect in its concerns — as witness recent offhand conceptual sculptures about how our consumerist cornucopia crushes our delicate souls. But pulp art's descendants use their entertainment to get away with contemplating torture, war, biotech, and civil rights in television like 24 and Battlestar Galactica, the Harry Potter books, and movies like The Road, 28 Days Later, Cloverfield, and Children of Men.

Consider New Worlds, Paul Stahr's 1932 painting of a man standing atop a Manhattan skyscraper as some force (an earthquake?) shatters and topples the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and the city floods. It's the nebulous terrors of the 1930s — economic collapse, threats of war — made specific and concrete. Update the clothing and Stahr's painting could be a poster for the 2004 climate-change thriller The Day After Tomorrow, in which New York is smashed by sudden flooding and freezing. Or it could just as well be a post 9/11 anxiety dream.

Mark Cooper and Joe Zane "More Is More" is the oh-so-accurate title of Somerville artist Mark Cooper's overflowing cornucopia of an installation at Samson.

The Boston Cyberarts Fest needs a reboot It's a quiet morning along the Rose Kennedy Greenway when I meet Mark Skwarek — a shaggy-haired New Yorker in a Spider-Man T-shirt and Puma sneakers — to check out his latest project, Occupation Forces.

An interview with Kyle Bryant, woodcutter When he's not rapping at the Big Easy, debating mayoral candidates about the value of street art, or working as a counselor with the Boys and Girls Clubs, Kyle Bryant is a printmaker with Pickwick Independent Press.